Coventry Patmore

Edmund Gosse, a mandarin of established English life
and librarian to the House of Lords, used strange phrases in
writing of Coventry Patmore, whom he described as being
"like a king in exile," and again "like the Phoenix of fable,
the solitary specimen of an unrelated species." More than
once Gosse referred to him as "this extraordinary man." Frank Harris, an extreme contrast to Gosse's respectable and
established figure, was no less struck by Patmore's unique
distinction. For him Patmore "represented all that was best
in English life," though he was "a mass of contradictions
because at odds with his time." Having visited his home, Harris found him "lovable and beloved by his own even to
reverence."

That Patmore had such effects on men as different as Gosse
and Harris is one illustration of the strength and independence in his character, striking even to those out of sympathy with his ideas. Yet he can hardly appear what is called
a sympathetic character to those who set no value on his
ideas or to those who find them repugnant, for these ideas
were too closely interwoven in the fabric of his life and in
the stuff of his being. Even his weaknesses and his failures
can only be judged in relation to them, for they produced the
tensions between his passions and his perceptions of the other
world.

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.